Goal setting is one of those things you either love doing, don’t bother with or procrastinate the sh*t over! Are you one of those people that kinda thinks in your head about the goals you’d like to set out and achieve but don’t put thoughts to paper or make a measurable action plan?

Me too! Well, that used to be me. Now I make a concerted effort to set myself 3 BIG goals a year, and make smaller ones as the year progresses.

Each year I get better at setting goals as I experience the impact it makes. Setting goals gives you long term vision and short term motivation! The 3 BIG goals I set myself for 2012 (and were goals I set out to achieve in the first half of the year) were to:

1. Launch my lifestyle blog (launched April 11th)
2. Move home to Perth and restart my business (moved April 29th)
3. Get up to date with my tax, including having systems put in place that I fill in on a weekly basis (lodged in May for the previous 2 years – bad I know – and again in October)

Some of the smaller goals I made for myself and have achieved were to:

1. Write my first eBook – my Lean Bod Summer Meal Plans!
2. Embark on a 21 day fat-loss, body sculpting detox that was both challenging and rewarding!
3. Be as supportive and strong as possible for my family and sister who had a terrible accident in July
4. Do some business mentoring – I hired a mentor and have completed Denise Duffield-Thomas’s Lucky Bitch Money Bootcamp. A-mazing!!! Denise is a pro at helping women overcome money blocks. She’s holding a free webinar to help women clear their money crap. Sign up here (it’s free). Doing Denise’s bootcamp has really helped me sort out my money ‘stuff’, and I loved how supportive the group was! Such a fantastic community of like-minded women. I can’t wait to sign up for the next live course!
5. Start my outdoor bootcamp at Cottesloe beach – Love it!
6. Do more personal development work – I’m seeing a beautiful, soulful practitioner for Integral Meridian Therapy. It has been amazing!
7. Did my first ever presentation on mindset and nutrition at Lululemon in Cottesloe. I’ll be doing another one January 16th if anyone’s interested 🙂

You know it’s funny, looking back over this list of big and small (although some of the ‘smaller’ things seem quite big to me now!) it really does feel like I’ve achieved so much. Sure there’s still some areas of my life I’d like to see improvements, but that’s where my goals for 2013 come into play! And I feel SO CLEAR on what it is I want and where I want to go in my personal life and business.

I highly recommend you write out all of your achievements for 2012. You’ll be surprised at how much you really have accomplished! And If you haven’t but would like to in 2013…follow this guide!

Some Tools To Help You Set Goals

• Setting 3 big goals a year is probably enough. Like I said above, you can make smaller goals as the year progresses (the smaller goals can either be steps towards achieving your ‘big’ goals, or separate ones all together)
• Try to set goals in more than one of the following categories: career, relationships, spirituality, personal growth, health, finances, creativity, education and pleasure.
• Make your goals measurable. So you can track your progress, be as specific with your goals as possible. Asking questions such as, “when am I going to achieve this by”, “how am I going to achieve it” and “how will I know that I’ve achieved it” are good ones to start with. For example, a measurable goal might be to hire a personal trainer to help you lose 6kg by April 1st so you can do the professional photo shoot you’ve always wanted to do!
• Be realistic. Your goals need to be attainable and believable to you. For example, there’s no point setting a goal to buy a Porsche by June if there’s really no way that’s going to happen (if it is possible – feel free to take me for a spin ;-)). But that’s not to say your goals can’t be challenging…they most likely will be, and that’s a good thing for personal growth
• What are you passionate about? Do you know what it is you reaallly love doing or what you reaallly want to improve/change/attain in your life? Choose goals based on what your heart tells you and not what your mind or cultural constructs tell you…please re read this point!

• Make lifetime goals if you like planning for your future (if your immediate future is enough for you, stick with your yearly plan). Think about what you’d like in 5 years time and then set yourself a 5 year plan. Start with making a 1 year plan, 6 month plan and a 1 month plan and then set yourself “to do” lists on a daily basis to keep yourself on track. Repeat this process each year
• Be accountable. Especially if you procrastinate! Announce one or more of your goals on facebook or another public forum…including the time you wish to achieve this goal of yours! Tell your family, friends, partner for support. Hire a mentor of some kind or another professional depending on what your goal is
• Review your goals. Check in from time to time, a couple of times a month, and make sure your goals are still in line with what’s important to you. If you’re doing some personal development work (everyone would benefit from this) you may find your goals need to be tweaked or radically changed to fit in with your new values/morals/ethics

Be bold and proud! Leave a comment below or on my Facebook page telling the LWER community 3 goals you’ve achieved this year and 3 goals you’d like to achieve in 2013! I’d really love to hear from you 🙂

Want to know what else I’ve been doing to map out my year? Read  this post!

Liz xx